Just a few hours ago, Fisker Automotive announced that it was able to determine the cause of the latest fire that destroyed a Karma hybrid/electric sedan. Now, we’ve learned that Tesla Motors/Space X CEO Elon Musk is jumping into the fray to kick Fisker Automotive while it’s down in an interview with Automobile Magazine. It should be noted, however, that Musk and Fisker Automotive founder Henrik Fisker have a rocky past (read this article for some background information).

Musk was somewhat diplomatic when talking about the Karma’s styling, noting, “It looks good. Particularly from the side it looks good. I don’t love the front. It looks too much like a caricature of a Mexican Bandito—the grille.”

But the emphasis on over-the-top styling lead to one of Musk’s main criticisms of Henrik Fisker and the Karma sedan. “The fundamental problem with Henrik Fisker — he is a designer or stylist… he thinks the reason we don’t have electric cars is for lack of styling. This is not the reason. It’s fundamentally a technology problem."

In other words, the Karma is all style with little substance.

Henrik Fisker and the Fisker Karma [Image Source: Car and Driver]

Musk goes on to state that the voluptuous bodylines of the Karma make for an oddly packaged vehicle. For example, despite the fact that Karma weighs as much as a full-size SUV (5,300 lbs) and is nearly 200" long, it has very little cargo capacity and can only seat four people.

Although Musk doesn't allude to the Model S in this section of the Automobile Magazine interview, the Model S is faster, features both a front and rear trunk, and can seat five people in its base configuration. The Model S can also seat up to seven with optional rear-facing jump seats installed in the cargo hold (Elon Musk has five children and wanted to be able to transport them all in the Model S).

Musk also took Fisker to task over outsourcing much of the development of the Karma to other companies (most of the development for the Model S was done in-house). "He outsourced the engineering and manufacturing. But the fact is…that’s the crux of the problem. And he’s outsourcing to people who don’t know how to solve the problem."

To sum up his thoughts on the Karma, Musk proclaimed that the vehicle is "a mediocre product at a high price." The Fisker Karma starts at $95,900 while the entry-level Model S starts at $57,500 and can hit $105,400 for the "Signature Performance" version.

quote: And the Elise -- once you added the electric powertrain, it invalidated all the crash work, the mass grew by 30 percent, the weight distribution was different, the load points were all different. We had to stretch the chassis just to be able to fit people in

The Elise is also a unibody. For a frame-on-body, these types of issues shouldn't be a problem. Tesla should have done the math on minimum size required for passenger space + electrical components before commissioning a chassis.